Traumatised by the destruction of their homes and lives, Haiti’s children are finding some refuge in schools resurrected from the rubble
If there is a drier, dustier, more desolate place in the Caribbean I’d be amazed to see it. A few weeks ago, this vast space in Haiti now know as Corail Cesselesse was a vast scraggly grassland about 20km outside the capital, Port-au-Prince.
Now, after the 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on 12 January, it is home to several thousand of the 1.5 million who have been displaced. Many are children – in a country where half the population is under 18 – and for those who have moved to giant camps, they have also been uprooted from their homes, their families and their schools.
Corail is an official camp – the product of inter-agency co-operation and government consent – and there is plenty of evidence of the foreign money pouring into the country in the aftermath of the earthquake. It is guarded by armed UN guards, and there are well-organised latrines and water tanks.